Kinshasa was a village on the south bank of the Congo when Stanley passed through in 1877. He returned in 1881 and established Leopoldville on the banks of contemporary Kintambo and Ngaliema. A post was opened upriver at Kinshasa in 1883. In 1923 Leopoldville was named the capital, comprising both Kinshasa and Leopoldville, established at Kalina (now Gombe), while "old" Leopoldville remained the capital of the Province. The Leopoldville-Kinshasa agglomeration was renamed Kinshasa in 1966.

TRANSLATE

Monday, June 9, 2014

When I was
preparing the post on public transportation in Kinshasa (See. October 24, 2011), I used a 100 Fr. share document to
illustrate the Société Industries et Transports
Automobiles au Congo (ITAC), which operated the first bus system in the
capital in February 1928.Recently, I came across a
photo of the original bus.

The buses
offered 22 places, of which 18 were reserved for whites.Notwithstanding well-connected colonial
luminaries on its board, including Colonel Georges Moulaert (who created the first Cité
in Kintambo in 1911, See April 30, 2011, and contender for Governor General in 1933), Albert Paulis (who
built the Katanga railways), and General Alphonse Cabra (who surveyed the frontier
with Angola), the service didn’t catch on.The company was liquidated in October 1932, a victim of the
Depression, apparently because downtown Kinshasa didn’t grow as had been expected.